


carry me

by VesperNexus



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt, Major character death - Freeform, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 14:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperNexus/pseuds/VesperNexus
Summary: Steve doesn’t realise he’s been crying until he swallows the salt on his tongue.





	carry me

**Author's Note:**

> this story was born at 2am

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

The boy comes apart in his arms. Head buried in the curve of his neck, Steve feels his skin grow moist with loud terrified tears. Peter is shaking violently, or maybe it’s him. He feels like he should be shaking.

Ms Potts is staring into the vacant eyes of her husband. Maybe she’s thinking about the little girl who will never know her father. The little house that will feel so much emptier. Maybe she’s thinking about how fleeting the last five years really were.

“You can rest now,” Ms Potts says, words slipping in a teary stumble, “We’re safe. You can rest now.”

A shiver curls at the base of his spine. Tony’s lips part ever so slowly, but no words come out. He blinks once, twice, and then he’s gone.

He’s gone.

Tony’s  _gone._

Steve barely keeps himself up when Peter’s knees give in. The boy is an incoherent mess begging - _begging ­– please Mr Stark, Captain why won’t he wake up, Mr Stark wake up -_ but he isn’t coming back. It’s over. It’s over.

The light slips from Tony’s eyes quick as it had ever been there.

Steve doesn’t realise he’s been crying until he swallows the salt on his tongue.

*

Steve carries the body himself.

After a little while, trembling from his hands to his toes, Bruce offers to help.

Every muscle in Steve’s body aches and the blood is only starting to dry around his eyes, but he curls his fingers gently as anything into the suit and keeps Tony’s head balanced on his shoulder. Steve is a moment from collapsing into nothing, the blissful pull of darkness tugging tantalisingly at the edges of his vision.

He says no to Bruce. Steve won’t let him. He can’t.  _I’ll carry him,_ he might have said once or twice.  _I’ll carry him,_ and Bruce understands.

He forces one foot in front of the other, heels dragging in the sand. Everyone stares. They’ve won, after half a decade  _they’ve won_ but there’s not a single smile. Watching Steve carry the corpse of his friend through a flowerbed of bloodied and limp bodies doesn’t feel like a victory.

It doesn’t feel like anything.

*

Steve finds Peter slumped over a short set of stairs. He never thought he’d ever seen someone look more uncomfortable in a suit.

“Hey.”

The boy sheepishly blinks up at him. “Hey.”

The life has been pulled from Peter’s eyes in a swift and unyielding tug. Steve swipes a hand over his face, sitting beside the boy. Everyone else is inside for the wake.

“Couldn’t breathe either, huh?”

Peter shrugs. “Guess so.”

Something heavy clamps around his heart and it feels as if it may fall through his ribcage.

“Peter…”

“It shouldn’t have been him.”

Steve wants to sigh, to cry, to scream, smash his fists against the wooden walls because  _it shouldn’t have_ but he can’t. The devastation simmers uncomfortably underneath his skin, but he refuses to release it before he can look at himself in the mirror.

So he swallows it all back down, with the bile and crushing sorrow.

“No. It shouldn’t have been Nat, either. It shouldn’t have been Gamora, or the Wakandians, or the Asgardians, or-”

“Don’t  _fucking_ give me that.” Peter cuts him off sharply. There’s a dangerous resentment flitting between his eyes, in the sudden clench of his fists, the silent grit of his teeth. “Don’t  _fucking_ do that, Cap.”

Steve sighs. “I’m sorry.”

The boy just shakes his head. Silence trembles in the uncertain place between them for a long unyielding moment.

“He loved you, you know.” It slips out quietly, a murmur so subtle the wind almost carries it away. Peter turns to him, red-rimmed eyes a firestorm of devastation Steve won’t be able to quell. But he tries nonetheless. “I don’t know if he told you.”

“He did,” the boy replies confidently, quickly, the barest quiver chipping at the end of his words. “Not – not with words, but he said it.”

Steve thinks to the heart-wrenching moment when the ship had first landed, and Tony collapsed into him,  _I lost the kid._ The way the words had torn him apart physically. He thinks to the fleeting moment in the battlefield when Tony took Peter into his arms with a hug so vicious he might never have let go.

“Peter…” he doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what he can say. Doesn’t know if  _words_ can make anything better now.

“He gave everything up for us. He has a  _kid,_ Cap.”

 _Had,_ Steve can’t bring himself to say.  _Had a kid._

There’s nothing else.

Sometime later the little gathering begins to spill outside on the patio. Ms Potts is carrying a beautiful blossoming wreath in her hands. The little girl at her side barely reaches her hip.

There’s nothing else.

Peter gets up, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

“We should…”

“Yeah,” Steve replies, but he doesn’t move.

There’s nothing else.


End file.
